Site Presented By
Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
andken
Published Letters: 26 Editor's Choice: 1
1-) The south is not a republican territory. For an example, democrats controls the ALABAMA Legislature, and there are several popular democrat governors south of the Mason-Dixie Line. Last year the party also made several progresses in states like Arkansas(*Now a bluer state than most states in the Northeast coast*), Kentucky, Tennessee.
Yes, democrats are very competitive in the South. Specially considering big cities like Atlanta, Durham, Raleigh, Richmond.
2-) The demographics of the South are changing. The big state in the region(Florida) is not really the image of the evangelical and white state that most people thinks.
3-) The black vote is important ONLY if the democrats manage to win PART of the white vote in the southern states. The author seems to forget that a large part of American blacks are concentrated in the South.
4-) Errr, the problem is not winning the white male vote, but not facing a stunning defeat among them. Had Gore won JUST ONE SOUTHERN state he would have won. Kerry didn´t won one state outside Chicagoland in the West and neither in the south. You can´t win ignoring half of America.
Claire McCaskill won last year campaigning heavily to rural voters. Her smaller margin of defeat in Rural Missouri and the heavily democrat vote in Kansas City and Saint Louis meant victory. It´s a formula successful in Virginia and can be applied to every southern state with Big Cities.
5-) Powerful swing states, like Ohio, Missouri and Pennsylvania
are HEAVILY influenced by the South vote. Hadn´t the republicans scared the Catholic vote they could have won in Pennsylvania.
6-) The author could explain why Arkansas has more democrat elected officials than California.
7-) The matter is not only the south, but the West. And it´s easier to appeal to hispanic and southern blacks with moderated candidate that can also appeal to white male vote than with a north cost liberal that ignores the rest of the country.
"Up until 1964, the South had only one political party, the Democrats. Out of hatred for Lincoln's Republicans and what they had done to the Confederacy, the GOP was almost entirely irrelevant in the region. That all changed when Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act in 1964. All of those loyal Democrats -- including Strom Thurmond, Jesse Helms, and even Ronald Reagan -- shifted allegiances to the GOP. The last vestiges of the traditional southern Democrats, George Wallace voters, came over to the GOP a few years later."
It´s not so easy. Jimmy Carter won almost entirely due to the South, and until some years ago most of the senators and governors in the region were democrats(Some states are facing it first republican governor since Reconstruction now). Arkansas is becoming a solid blue state.
And James Eastland, a notorious racist senator, would keep his democratic affiliation long after the CRA. And most Dixiecrats were more than mere segregationists. Most people forgets that the South was the only region that didn´t fell to Catholic bigotry in 1928 with Al Smith.
if the democrats want to win the first thing that they should do is to forget issues like abortion and gun control. Abortion is a dangerous issue because no major pro-life or pro-choice organization has the same position of most Americans on the issue: keep the government out of it. Few people wants a total ban on abortion, but no one want eight month fetus being aborted. Democrats should wait to see republicans destroy themselves on the issues. Gun Control also only alienates voters.
Democrats should be worried with things like education, security, transportation, not abortion, gender issues and gun control. That´s how democrats won the governorship of states like Wyoming, Montana, Kansas, Oklahoma and Arizona.
By the way, it´s bizarre to see how democrats ignore their own gold like Governor Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas or Governor Janet Napolitano of Kansas to praise mediocre senators...
JoeCHI
Shapiro is not pointing that. He is pointing that polls shows that something like 40% to 50% of people polled say that they would never vote for her.
1-) I live abroad and I despise Hillary with all my forces. If someone out there thinks that you need Hillary to improve your foreign image you are are plain wrong.
By the way, I sincerely thought that the US was something better than a Banana Republic where two political families dominates the Presidency...
2-) Hillary is the worst of worlds. She is too liberal and urban for moderate voters and too conventional to urban voters. She is the unprincipled politician that would have several vunerabilities in the general election.
Sure, when she loses, they will blame some third party candidate again...
"They helped elect a Southern Baptist named Jimmy Carter to the presidency in 1976"
Carter was elected with the votes of Southern Conservatives, not liberals. In fact, liberals tried to avoid him getting his nomination. Not because of religion, but...
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
